Happy Valentine Daze, Aries! After meditating about what advice would be most useful for your love life during the rest of 2008, I decided on this observation from 17th-century philosopher Sir Francis Bacon: "There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion." In other words, you should raise your appreciation for interesting idiosyncrasies and cute "flaws" and odd proportions. They are not inconvenient imperfections that mar the beauty you need in your life. They are the very essence of it.

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How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love the fact that you're a spiritual animal. I adore how you can lose yourself in passion but never forsake your commitment to the good and the true. I am delighted by your sacred quest for pleasure in all its varieties--from eating ice cream and stealing an extra half hour of sleep to noticing beauty in the smallest details and making love with tender abandon. More than any other sign of the zodiac, you work diligently to create the miracle I love most--the miracle named by poet Elizabeth Barret Browning when she wrote "Earth's crammed with heaven."
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P.S. Now I dare you to create a moment in the coming days when it will be appropriate for you to utter these words: "The air I breathe in a room empty of you is unhealthy. The merest whisper of your name awakes in me a shuddering sixth sense. I am longing for a kiss that makes time stand still." (The preceding testimony is a blend of words from Edgar Allan Poe, Pamela Moore, and John Keats.)
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The preceding love notes were brought to you by my last two books, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings and The Televisionary Oracle, and by my music CD, Give Too Much.

Happy Valentine Daze, Taurus! After extensive meditation about what advice would be most useful for your love life in the coming months, I decided on this observation from the Dutch priest and writer Henri Nouwen: "Your body needs to be held and to hold, to be touched and to touch. None of these needs is to be despised, denied, or repressed. But you have to keep searching for your body's deeper need, the need for genuine love. Every time you are able to go beyond the body's superficial desires for love, you are bringing your body home and moving toward integration and unity."

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How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love how you never bear a grudge against the mountains that are in your way, but rather just set to work getting around them. I adore the way you catalyze interesting chemical reactions everywhere you go. I am delighted by how you bravely follow the leaps of your effervescent intelligence--even when it means you treat life as if it had a fast-forward button. Last but not least, I am quite fond of how you can yack on your cell phone and ride your bike and snack on corn chips all at the same time.
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P.S. Memorize the lines below, which were written by George Bernard Shaw, and deliver them to the one with whom you'd most like to make beautiful music together. If there is no human you feel moved to address so tenderly, speak them to a pet, muse, angel, or yourself. "You are my inspiration and my folly. You are my light across the sea, my million nameless joys, and my day's wage. You are my divinity, my madness, my selfishness, my transfiguration and purification. You are my rapscallionly fellow vagabond, my tempter and star. I want you."
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The preceding love notes were brought to you by my last two books, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings and The Televisionary Oracle, and by my music CD, Give Too Much.

Happy Valentine Daze, Gemini! During my search for the spark that would be most likely to energize your love life, I found this dose of truth from novelist Tom Robbins: "We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love." I hope that quote inspires you to shed any tendency you might have to wait for the ideal romantic situation to find its way to you. Instead, establish a habit of visualizing in precise detail the kind of love you want to give and receive. Then work on patiently materializing it.

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How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love how in recent months you've been making yourself more and more open to "truths in their wild state" (philosopher Gilles Deleuze's phrase). Primal magic has come calling for you, not the tame stuff you'd been satisfied with before. In the past you've flirted too often with excitement that didn't turn out to be all that useful or healthy; but lately you've been hungry for the thrill of unknown adventures that are also very good for you. I love you for that!
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P.S. Do you understand that you can actually *listen* a person's soul into existence? Your receptive interest in the inner life of those you care for can awaken their dormant powers. The teacher Richard Moss says, "The greatest gift you can give another is the purity of your attention." And philosopher Paul Tillich said: "The first duty of love is to listen."
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The preceding love notes were brought to you by my last two books, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings and The Televisionary Oracle, and by my music CD, Give Too Much.

Here's my Valentine message for you, Cancerian: The sea inside of you is not just at high tide, it's at the highest tide possible -- like what happens when the moon is full at the same time that it's at its closest approach to Earth. To intensify the drama, the sea inside of you is stormy, with torrential rains pouring down from the heaven inside of you as winds bluster and lightning cracks. There are even water spouts rising up now and then. Yet from my perspective, it's all gorgeous and majestic, a marvelous spectacle worthy of celebration. And since I'm confident no harm will come to you during this elemental interlude, I advise you to just enjoy the ride.

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How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love how well you're maintaining your sanity as you weave your way along the curvy uphill path with the wasteland on one side and the fake paradise on the other. I admire the fact that your sense of humor is expanding, not shrinking, in the face of floods of ambiguous data. And I adore the fierce poise and open-hearted skepticism you're able to muster as you struggle against all odds to be true to yourself. You're my hero, Braveheart.
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P.S. It's often easier for us Cancerians to love than to be loved. We feel more comfortable giving than taking. In fact, we're even susceptible to believing that we're powerful when we're nurturing others and weak when we're being nurtured. Yet the best astrologers agree that until we learn to receive love, we can't fulfill our life's mission. In the next 35 years and beyond, I urge you to practice this art with all your fierce and vulnerable heart. And then practice and practice and practice some more.
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The preceding love notes were brought to you by my last two books, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings and The Televisionary Oracle, and by my music CD, Give Too Much.

Scholar Suzanne Juhasz says that Emily Dickinson's eroticism "inflects and charges" most of her poems. "Erotic desire -- sensuous, nuanced, flagrant, extreme, outlandish, and profound -- is her way of interacting with the world." From an astrological perspective, it would make perfect sense if you experimented with a similar predilection in the coming days, Leo. During the superheated grace period you'll be enjoying, interesting things are likely to happen if you basically make love to the whole world. The urge to merge shouldn't just be the icing on the cake. It should be the icing, the cake, the plate it's on, your eating of the cake, your feeding of the cake to others, and all the stories you tell about your encounter with the cake. Happy Valentine Daze, Leo!

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How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love your urge to avoid hanging around places where everyone wants to be somewhere besides where they are. I'm also enamored of the wisdom you demonstrate by keeping a corner of your world messy, thereby avoiding the dangers of excessive perfectionism. Maybe most of all, my dear, I'm delighted by your steadily growing talent for putting things back together again after you have dismantled them to see how they work.
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P.S. Memorize the following lines, borrowed from a poem by Andrew Varnon, and say them to the person whose destiny needs to be woven more closely together with yours. "Be my ruckus, my perfect non-sequitur. Be my circuit-breaker, my lengthening shadows at dusk, my nest of pine needles, my second-story window. Be my if-you-stare-long-enough-you'll-see. Be my subatomic particle. Be my backbeat, my key of C minor, my surly apostle, my scandalous reparté, my maximum payload. Be my simmering, seething, flickering, radiating, shimmering, and undulating."
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The preceding love notes were brought to you by my last two books, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings and The Televisionary Oracle, and by my music CD, Give Too Much.

"The Eskimos had 52 names for snow because it was important to them," wrote novelist Margaret Atwood. "There ought to be as many for love." Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to coin at least nine of those 52 new names between now and January 1, 2009. Of course that means you will have to discover or create nine alternate states of love that have previously been unnamed. And to do that, you'll have to put aside your habitual expectations and standard definitions of what constitutes love so that you can explore an amazing array of nuances, including varieties you never imagined existed. Start now, Virgo. Happy Valentine's Daze!

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How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love how you always manage to drum up a "delirium of solutions" (in William Carlos Williams' phrase), and how many of them are elegant. I am delighted you're developing an ever-more-finely honed knack for knowing precisely when and how to give your abundant gifts, and I'm also excited by your growing sense of when to cut back on your giving so as not to overdo it. And I love love love how you're no longer trying to get fixed by influences that can't fix you, and how you're learning to recognize the magic that really can heal.
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P.S. Please recite these words from Leo Tolstoy as if they were your own: "Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love."
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The preceding love notes were brought to you by my last two books, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings and The Televisionary Oracle, and by my music CD, Give Too Much.

Happy Valentine Daze, Libra! After strenuous meditation about what advice would be most likely to energize your love life, I decided on this edgy wisdom from writer Charles Caleb Colton: "If you cannot inspire a woman with love of you, fill her above the brim with love of herself; all that runs over will be yours." (Substitute "man" for "woman" and "him" for "her" if that makes the message work best for you.)

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How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. First, I love how you have desires for seemingly impossible things. It's your most scary and winsome quality. But there are so many other weirdly adorable things about you, too. I love how you don't run away from the cracks that open up in the world but brazenly peer into them to scope out the mysteries that lie on the other side. I love the fact that you seem to be the reincarnation of a sacred temple prostitute who is hell-bent on expressing your exotic wisdom in this profane world. I'm even delighted when you brilliantly analyze the clockwork of the universe so that you can mess with that clockwork.
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P.S. "One should always be in love," said Oscar Wilde. While I heartily agree, I must also note that it's nearly impossible to pull off. To do so, you have to acquire a number of difficult skills, the most crucial of which is an ability to elude the numbing trance of daily routine. Fortunately for you, you are equipped to sustain the heroic ingenuity necessary to dwell permanently in the blessed torment of love.
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The preceding love notes were brought to you by my last two books, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings and The Televisionary Oracle, and by my music CD, Give Too Much.

Happy Valentine Daze, Scorpio! After extensive meditation about what advice would be most useful for your love life in the coming months, I decided on this gentle rant from the South African poet Shabbir Banoobhai: "Love is a mystery. And the reason why it is a mystery and should remain a mystery is that knowledge of it would give us mastery over it -- would enable us to manipulate it -- and love, truth, God, cannot be manipulated. Hence the Prophet exclaimed, 'My Lord, increase my bewilderment in Thee.'"

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How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. First and foremost, I adore it when you give your companions a sweet, personal version of the higher octave of love: the primordial force of nature described by French philosopher Teilhard de Chardin. "Some day after we have mastered the winds, the waves and gravity," said de Chardin, "we will harness for God the energies of love; and then for a second time in the history of the world, humans will have discovered fire.” There's another way I love how you love. More than any other sign you put into action the ideal expressed by French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery: "Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but looking outward together in the same direction."
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P.S. Find someone to whom you'd love to read the following words, written by Marge Piercy in her poem "The Real Hearth." "Let's heat up the night to a boil. Let's cook every drop of liquid out of our flesh till we sizzle, not a drop of come left. We are pots on too high a flame. Our insides char and flake dark like sinister snow idling down. We breathe out smoke. We die out and sleep covers us in ashes. We lie without dreaming, empty as clean grates. Yet we wake rebuilt, clattering and hungry as waterfalls leaping off, rushing into the day, roaring our bright intentions. It is the old riddle in the Yiddish song, what can burn and not burn up, a passion that gives birth to itself every day."
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The preceding love notes were brought to you by my last two books, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings and The Televisionary Oracle, and by my music CD, Give Too Much.

After meditating on how to energize your love life this Valentine season, I decided to encourage you to bring the spirits of sampling and the mash-up into your relationship life. Sampling is what happens when a musician openly lifts a riff out of an existing song and inserts it into his or her own composition. In a mash-up, a producer takes parts from two different songs to assemble a new song that has elements of both originals but is an entirely new creation. I encourage you to apply these approaches to your collaborations with intimate allies. For example, "sample" a close friend's favorite catchphrases or clothes, and use them as your own. Or tell that person a story from his or her own past, but recount it as if it happened to you. The two of you could also write a journal entry together, taking turns spinning out each new line. You might even switch roles for a day, trying out what it actually feels like to be the other person.

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How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love how you're peeling off the psychic suit of armor you've worn for so long. I am delighted by the way you're exploring all the hiding places in your heart. I'm thrilled by how sympathetic you're becoming to Thoreau's belief that "There is no remedy for love but to love more" and to Pascal's assertion that "If you do not love too much, you do not love enough." And I'm exceedingly pleased that you're now receptive to what poet Ezra Pound once wrote: "What thou lovest well remains,/ the rest is dross/ What thou lov'st well shall not be reft of thee/ What thou lov'st well is thy true heritage. . .
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P.S. Meditate on these love bombs: 1. "We are not the same person this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person." - W. Somerset Maugham. 2. "People often start by falling in love, and they go on for years without realizing that love must change into some other love which is unlike the original." - Iris Murdoch. 3. "Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new." - Ursula K. Le Guin. 4. "A successful marriage is an edifice that must be rebuilt every day." - Andre Maurois.
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The preceding love notes were brought to you by my last two books, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings and The Televisionary Oracle, and by my music CD, Give Too Much.

Happy Valentine Daze, Capricorn! The astrological omens suggest that you should liberate your wild heart from its hiding place, maybe even experiment with extravagant expressions of love. To get yourself worked up into a proper state of fertile agitation, read aloud from Pablo Neruda's book 100 Love Sonnets (translated by Stephen Tapscott), starting with "Love Sonnet XI": "I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair. Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets. Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps . . . [I] hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails, I want to eat your skin like a whole almond . . . I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes. And I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight, hunting for you, for your hot heart, like a puma in the barrens . . . ."

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How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love how you name things that don't quite exist yet, because by doing so you help those things to be born. I adore it when you unleash your imagination from its enclosure and let it fly far away to gaze at forbidden sights and feed on outrageous nourishment. And I am delighted when you shape your experiments so that they're not weird and selfish but rather natural and generous, not decadent violations but exuberant homecomings. Wait! Here's one more throb of appreciation. I love how you can be so wildly serious, loudly soft, thoughtfully garish, lyrically logical, and chaotically organized.
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P.S. meditate on these love bombs: 1. "To prepare for love, learn to run through snow, leaving no footprints." -Turkish proverb. 2. "Love rules without rules." -Italian proverb. 3. "Love imperfectly. Be a love idiot. Let yourself forget any love ideal." -Sark
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The preceding love notes were brought to you by my last two books, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings and The Televisionary Oracle, and by my music CD, Give Too Much.

Happy Valentine Daze, Aquarius! Want to make your love life better? Then purify your motivations for seeking love. For at least three weeks, be impossibly honest and noble and righteous in your dealings with intimate allies. You might even consider approaching romance with the same reverence a monk summons in his spiritual quest for divine communion. Fast, pray, meditate, dance holy dances, wander into the wilderness and cry out for a vision -- all in the name of deepening your capacity for the transformative power of human relationships.

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How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love how unflinchingly you peer into the heart of your own darkness. I adore how resourceful you are about turning difficulties into assets and how smart you are about healing yourself. I am delighted that you've stepped up your commitment to deciphering the code you left for yourself before you came into this life. Welcome back to the Source, Beautiful!
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P.S. Meditate on these love bombs: 1. "Love asks you beautiful, unanswerable questions." - Carl Sandburg. 2. "Love brings to life whatever is dead around us." - Franz Rosenzweig. 3. "Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other." - Rainer Maria Rilke. 4. "Love is the only game where two can play and both win." - Erma Freesman. 5. "Falling in love is a lot like dying. You never get to do it enough to become good at it." - My Scorpio friend Elise. 6. "Love is like a well in the wilderness where time watches over the wandering lightning." - Pablo Neruda.
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The preceding love notes were brought to you by my last two books, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings and The Televisionary Oracle, and by my music CD, Give Too Much.

Happy Valentine Daze, Pisces! Here are the words of wisdom I think will be most useful as you shape the future of collaboration and togetherness. They come to you courtesy of writer Marnie Reed Crowell. "To keep a fire burning brightly," she says, "Keep the two logs together, near enough to keep each other warm and far enough apart -- about a finger's breadth -- for breathing room. Good fire, good marriage, same rule." Even if you're not married and don't plan to be anytime soon, this is an excellent guideline for any intimate connection you want to see thrive in 2008. Cultivate spacious closeness.

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How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love how skilled you are at wriggling free of unproductive jams. I admire the way you change yourself into a fresh creation when you've gone as far as you can with the old model. I am delighted by how robustly you rebel against your past and fling yourself open to the unpredictable sweep of the future. There are so many other ways I adore you, and here's one more: I am enchanted by how you always seem ready to build a castle in the wilderness if this world ever fails you.
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P.S. Memorize the following lines, and say them to a soul friend who most appreciates extravagant expressions of affection: "I love you more than it's possible to love anyone. I love you more than love itself. I love you more than you love yourself. I love you more than God loves you. I love you more than anyone has ever loved anyone in the history of the universe. In fact, I love you *more* than I love you." (P.S. But don't, under any circumstances, say this: "I love you more than you love me.")
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The preceding love notes were brought to you by my last two books, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings and The Televisionary Oracle, and by my music CD, Give Too Much.